To think 71 is too old for state pension age?

[winterwonder1]

This isn't just for people who are 21 now - that's for people born after 1970 - so 55 now. I can't imagine being fit enough to do my job at 71.
DWP State Pension age will have to rise to 71 says report | News Shopper

Your comment is based on emotion, this is a demographic shift and the maths doesn’t add up anymore.

It’s not based on what is right/wrong, fair or unfair it’s maths. We cannot have life expectancy as high as it currently is and state pension age as low.

Why would it need to be full-time? The state pension certainly isn't equivalent to a full-time wage. By that point in time you're unlikely to have the expense of raising children, and your house is likely to be paid off (housing benefit may be paid to fill in the gap).

@wipeywipe I will have 51 years of contributions when I hit 67. I will absolutely want to get my state pension.

All of us have the chance to become unemployed but not all of us will reach 71 in good enough health to work. 65 was the right age to start the pension so long as those able enough still have the option of working. They are trying to do it the other way round now. All those in ill health at 65+ will be expected to claim through unemployment and jump through the hoops expected of job seekers.

For most of my life I would not have been able to survive financially if I had been forced to pay into a private pension as well as a state one. I went decades juggling childcare, bills, money, working hard for jack shit. I will work till I drop but I will have my state pension in just under 5 years if it's a hill I have to stand up and die on.

NHS pensions are the same. Currently the 2015 scheme is 67

There will always be some like my father in law and my “auntie” Kath who have enjoyed good health and who could work later. My father in law is 74 and built a house last year (joiner to trade) and my “auntie” Kath is 76 and still works 20 hours a week by choice at a supermarket working both on the checkouts and at self scan. There will also be some like my maternal grandfather who had to give up work at 60 due to health issues and survived on the breadline for 15 years after giving up work. I don’t know what the answer is but they cannot keep putting the pension age up as the older you get the more likely you are to suffer from health issues that will make working difficult if not impossible. At the moment mine and DH pension age is 68. I do wonder if they will bring in means testing for the state pension in the future.

When the state pension was first introduced in the 1908 Act is was at the age of 70 - and life expectancy then was 51 at birth.

Well obviously. When state pension age was 60 - only for women - anyone still working at that point stopped paying NI. Seriously, who cares? Nobody who retired after about 2015 benefitted from that.

They aren’t tied. You can access it from 55 currently. You just get paid less per year as it has to last for more years.

I think you can be paid less than the full state pension if you don't pay NI up to your state retirement age. Even if you have 35 years payment. You can top up (if you know about it)

If you can't claim it pension and are in poor health won't you be receiving all sorts of benefits anyway available to working age people?

Yes agreed- but you can have 35 years in and still not get full pension if retire early and don't continue paying NICs

I agree. I think there’s a difference, though. Most of us today are fit and able to work after the age of 51. In your late 60s, it’s very much harder to do what you did at 51. Plus younger people really need the jobs. Years ago, people had to retire, whether they wanted to or not, so that younger people could have the work. It’s getting like that now. We need fewer people.

Must be if contracted out i guess

I think many people are in a similar situation. It is unfair to suggest everyone should have funded their own retirement while also living through a 15 year period of austerity.

you weren’t guaranteed to be healthy enough to work at 65 either - many aren’t. Healthy people shouldn’t rely on the state - if you haven’t put anything aside to support yourself then you have to work if you are able. If you aren’t able then there are other safety nets available.

No - the lowest female life expectancy in 20/22 was Blaenau Gwent (78.9 years)

It would help if we didnt have the ridiculous triple lock. Just match it to inflation

That's changed to 57 now, well for me it has.

It depends if you do a desk job I guess

But I wonder whether there will actually be jobs for all these older workers, and if there are, what are the younger workers doing??somehow I don’t think anyone has thought about it..

It may be what THEY think. But by making it public they then see what WE think.

Yes I agree.. but out problem is that people’s healthy years are a lot less than their life expectancy, especially at the lower end of the economic scale, which is compounded by the fact these are the people who do physical jobs which will often be impossible to do at 70.

I’m not anti older people working, I think it many cases it keeps you younger and certainly holds of cognitive decline. But it needs a lot of thinking through.

I agree. Unfortunately I think it’s so difficult politically that politicians (from both parties that have been in government) keep kicking the can down the road.

But you have to pay NIC until you reach qualifying SPA??????

The 35 year rule is for those who start paying in after 2016, For the rest of us paying in before that, it can be completely different - I myself started paying in 1979 and still have 3 years to find